dawn's piano

It’s a new year and we’re turning a new page - in our studio binders!  Did you know that student binders are our main throughway for communication on weekly assignments between student, teacher, and parent? Every week we write an assignment sheet detailing WHAT, and often HOW, a student should practice that week. Following these assignments plays a key role in practicing intentionally to establish consistent progress! There’s space to track daily practices throughout the week, and a box to add questions or a quick note to let me know how practice went.  But I’ve been noticing this school year in particular, that the binder is barely on many students’ radar despite my weekly reminders at lessons. This tells me I need to do a better job highlighting their importance for both piano kids and studio parents to be checking in on.  Enter our January challenge! Its a ‘Check Your Binder' challenge in which I hide a silly word in the written assignment each week during the month of...

I had planned to present a session at the KMTA Conference this past weekend, (Covid threw a wrench in that plan, so I'll be trying again next year), but my topic was 'Business Strategies for Independent Music Teachers'. Presenting like this is a new opportunity for me, and a way to grow in my profession. But working on this presentation has got me thinking a lot about automation, because it just so happens to be one of the best tools for surviving as an entrepreneur. The more you can automate, the less you have to spend valuable time manually doing tasks, and the more you have time for doing the parts of your job that you love.  And thinking on this topic has also got me thinking about how automation could be useful for piano students. Especially when it comes to building a practice habit. How can we take advantage of automation to support home practice?  Here are a few ideas off the top of my head:  Automatic reminders - setting an automatic alert or calendar reminder fo...

Lessons begin this week, and for this year's BIG practice challenge we're going to start a studio One Minute Club . This is a challenge that's been floating around the piano teaching world for a while, but I first heard of it on Susan Paradis' blog  several years back. And I think it's the one for us this year as we continue to build our sight reading fluency across all learning levels.  To get into the One Minute Club, all you have to do is to play all the notes in your assigned flash cards in under a minute! In the studio we'll be using Note Rush during piano lab to build the skills and try to gain entry into the club. Any students who hit their target during lessons will get added to the One Minute Club studio wall chart, AND will receive an official membership card and a prize. (I'm thinking gift certificates to the Pink Flamingo  candy shop , or something equivalent in your area for online students, so you know, prizes your piano kid is going to want!...

Our practice challenge for January is going to be based off an improvisational teaching acrostic, Get SMART, introduced to me by Shelly Davis of the piano parent podcast several years back.  You can listen to that podcast episode below to hear examples of students Getting Smart with their music.  The word SMART stands for  Style, Melody, Articulation, Rhythm  and  Tempo . And our challenge for this January will be for students to put their own spin on each of these elements into music of their choosing. Once they've given their own creative interpretation to a piece on each of the 5 musical elements, they'll have completed the challenge!  This is going to be very open-ended and student led because: Students can use the same music for all 5, so they end up with 5 different versions of the same piece, or choose different music for different elements along the way. Students can work through SMART in any order, they don't have to start with Style if they'd ra...

Practice Challenges help keep piano students motivated and progressing throughout the school year session. So in today's blog post, I'm outlining our practice challenges for the 2020-2021 School Year.  Year-Long Challenge First, our year-long challenge this year is going to be a Piano Maestro 40-Hour challenge . Any student who practices 40 hours or more in Piano Maestro over the course of the school year will receive a special prize (TBD) as well as some serious studio bragging rights. This adds up to a little over an hour a week, so making a 10-15 minutes of Piano Maestro a part of your every day practice might be the best way to reach this one.  The chart below is tracking our 40 hour challenge (which is 2400 total minutes!) Month-Long Challenges We will have 4 month-long challenges spread throughout the year. These are good motivators because they are short-term and make for easily measurable wins for students who track them. Here's what it will look like...

As we head into the home stretch of our studio school year, and look ahead to Progressions & the Spring Recital coming up in April, we've got one last practice challenge that is focused on getting us confident and performance ready: the bead challenge is back! The way it works is students mark on their practice tracker every single time they play their Recital and/or Progressions piece. For every 10 practices, they will earn a bead for their lanyard that we'll make in the last week of lessons. The goal is to practice those performance pieces 100 times before the show.  Students who get 10 beads will have completed the challenge, and will earn a music charm to attach to end of their lanyard, but they don't have to stop there! We'll be adding beads for every 10 times they practice their recital song through the end of March, and those lanyards can get as long as they like.  While this practice challenge does have a fun incentive, as always, the goal is to enc...

We've wrapped up our Pianovember practice challenge! If you want to see the final leaderboards on the challenge website you can head over to pianoparentpodcast.com/pianovember . Our studio collected 4,395 total tallies. And here are some shout-outs to our top 5 Pianovember practicers:  1. Elliot S - 895 2. Emory W - 659 3. Ruby T - 569 4. Gentri C - 393 5. Sloan S - 252 Way to go!  For the month of December we'll have another little rest from practice challenges while we finish preparing for the Christmas Festival on the 14th, enjoy some holiday themed theory games, and work up some short playlists of Christmas pieces to entertain family over the break.  When we resume lessons in January, we are going to kick off the Happy Birthday Practice Challenge. This one is actually quite easy, we just have to learn how to play "Happy Birthday"! I feel this is an important song for students to know because when birthdays come around, playing a piano accompaniment a...

As I announced at the beginning of the year, instead of doing a year-long practice challenge this time, we are trying 4 short one-month practice challenges spread throughout this school year. I like to think of this as something like running intervals: we will do some short sprints with the month challenges, and we'll also have some time slow down to a walk to breathe in between. So, what's coming up next? Well, we wrapped up the "Fall Into Music" challenge in September, and our next one is going to start up in November when we'll be joining Pianovember hosted by the Piano Parent Podcast .  In this practice challenge, students get one point every time they practice a song outside of lessons. Each student will need to keep track of tallies during their practice sessions each time they play a song, and at your lessons we will update the total tallies on the studio chart.  But it doesn't stop there because this practice challenge is also global! This means...

Our School Year Session will soon be under way, and as we head into September, we're going to participate into the "Fall into Music" Practice Challenge hosted by the Piano Parent Podcast. This is a short-term, world-wide practice challenge where each student tries to practice 20 days during the month of September. Any student who completes the challenge will receive a completion certificate, AND a brag photo on the studio social media. We know that the real work of learning to play an instrument is in the practice time spent between lessons, and we know that parents are the ones who have the tough job of reinforcing the practice habit at home. This challenge is designed to help us start off the school year with some real motivation to practice, making the job of getting your kids back to the piano a bit easier! So how does the Fall into Music challenge work?  Each student will be given a practice chart to take home and track their practice days.  (And if you'd ...

I am so excited to dive into the '18-'19 school year starting next week. And one way we'll make it fun heading into the fall is with a practice challenge.  Last year was my first year trying out a studio-wide practice challenge, and I loved the energy and motivation that it brought to my piano students throughout the year. Even my most reluctant practicers had spurts where they were goal-driven and focused on working pieces to completion. So I'm doing it again this year!  Now, I know that the studio is just starting back up, and I'm trying not to be too overzealous. So here's my challenge to each of this year's students:  Learn 20 pieces by the end of the term on April 26th. And that's it. Now I know the first question my students will ask when I introduce this to them is "what do I get if I do it?"  Well, I have answers.  If you complete your 20 piece challenge, you will get: A certificate of achievement presented to you on-stag...

It seems like we just launched our practice challenges in the fall, and already our studio year is wrapping up as we move towards recital season in the Spring! I applaud every one of my students who signed up for a practice challenge, and learned lessons in time management, consistency and perseverance. And I'll bet you noticed that when you were able to stick to a practice plan, you saw real growth and improvement. The saying goes: Practice makes progress , and we definitely proved that this year. Now, I wasn't just sitting on the sidelines cheering, I did the 100 day challenge too. Let me tell you, some days it was not easy, and there may have been a few midnight practice sessions just so I wouldn't have to start over. But I set myself the challenge too because I felt it was really important to share in this experience alongside my students. So here's how it went so far! [insert drumroll] In the 100 day challenge, congratulations to: Tyler D. Addyson D.  ...

Looking for a way to round out your child's music education? Or to squeeze in some practice when you are away from the piano? Just peruse your local library or bookstore's performing arts section. I headed over to Vroman's last week to see what was available and found some great choices! I was also glad to see some of my long-time favorites are still in print. This list is mostly picture books   meaning that if you read the book, then went on YouTube and listened to the artist or piece you read about, these would be a perfect fit to substitute for a 15-20 minute practice time. Children's Book of Music by DK Publishing (pictured) This book is an incredible survey of music history from early ancient to popular & film music of today. It comes with a CD to listen along, and has the photo and information block layouts that we've all come to love and expect from DK nonfiction books. This is an excellent book to take on a trip and study a few pages each day. (W...

In light of the 100 day challenge we are running for the 2017-2018 school year, I'm sure many of you are wondering, "but what about when I'm on vacation, or don't have a piano handy?" Well, you could always try fitting the piano in your car (or getting a portable Roll-Up Piano ) but just in case that doesn't work, never fear! We've got lots of "off-the-bench" ideas so you can stay on track for your challenge!

We are really excited to introduce two practice challenges for the 2017-2018 school year! Each student will choose between a 100 day surge challenge, or a 40 piece challenge (they can of course do both if they are feeling really ambitious). And there will be incentives! But before I get ahead of myself, let me explain these challenges.

I figured it was high time I did another post about my own musical projects. My newest pet project is an Irish flute I picked up in Killarney. I found it at a hole-in-the-wall music shop we came across on the honeymoon.

As the holiday season draws near, I can already feel the pace of life picking up. While Southern California is one of the only places you can have your heater on with a sweater one day, and your AC with a t-shirt the next in winter, the seasons are nonetheless changing. Grateful that I don't have to drive through snow to reach my students, I still feel winter approaching.